News release

Toronto

Greater Toronto Area is the Focal Point of Big Box Development in Canada

2016-10-27T05:00:00Z

JLL’s Big Box Report Identifies GTA as the logistics hub for Canada

TORONTO, 26 October, 2016 – JLL's annual Big Box Outlook identifies the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) as the logistics hub for Eastern Canada, North Eastern United States, as well as parts of Western Canada.

Over 68.4 percent of the 8.3 million square feet of big box development under construction is occurring in the GTA. Five of the developments are for buildings over 500,000 square feet; no other market has a big box building of that size under construction.

There is no big box development under construction in the Calgary & Area (C&A) or Greater Montreal Area (GMA). For the C&A it is because the market completed a big box development cycle in the first half of the year when 1.6 million square feet were delivered. In the GMA, a combination of available land and the demands of financing have meant no ground being broken.

"Vacancy rates for existing industrial space continues to decline across the Greater Toronto Area, which has fueled an exceptionally active speculative development market amongst local, national, and international developers. While vacancy rates for new big box distribution centres has increased due to this speculative development, we do not anticipate that newly available space will last long in the market," says Bill Bates, AVP and Co-Practice Lead, Industrial, JLL.

In terms of big box leases across the country, the GTA is also the focal point of big box lease activity. In the first half of 2016, the demand for big box space was overwhelmingly in the GTA; each of the other Canadian industrial markets had a total of three big box leases each, with the exception of Metro Vancouver (MV) which had four.

Another key finding from the report identifies 3PL and Logistics Distribution (freight forwarders, trucking companies, etc.) based companies are the most dominant big box tenant type across Canada.

JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a professional services and investment management firm offering specialized real estate services to clients seeking increased value by owning, occupying and investing in real estate. A Fortune 500 company with annual fee revenue of $5.2 billion and gross revenue of $6.0 billion, JLL has more than 280 corporate offices, operates in more than 80 countries and has a global workforce of more than 60,000. On behalf of its clients, the firm provides management and real estate outsourcing services for a property portfolio of 4.0 billion square feet, or 372 million square meters, and completed $138 billion in sales, acquisitions and finance transactions in 2015. Its investment management business, LaSalle Investment Management, has $59.1 billion of real estate assets under management. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit www.jll.com.